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It's a property referencing the digits - thus "digital". The results hold for all bases, not just base 10.
by bugzz 6y ago
It's a property referencing the digits - thus "digital". The results hold for all bases, not just base 10.
- patrec 6y agoDigit = finger. Most people have 10. It was a pun.
- gibolt 6y agoI have a 2 handed phone number
- drvdevd 6y agoI thought the joke was that digital = binary = 10 :)
- Blikkentrekker 6y agoToes are also digits. Whether the thumb and big toes are fingers is something that depends on definitions, but in the strictest sense they are excluded from fingers and toes, and thus humans generally have 20 digits, eight fingers, and eight toes by this definition.
- lupire 6y agoEvery base is base 10.
- RHSeeger 6y agoI laughed at that a lot more than I should have. After a long day, thank you for that.
- wahern 6y agoThe origin may be this comic: https://web.archive.org/web/20090125051251/http://cowbirdsinlove.com/43 https://web.archive.org/web/20090125051251/http://cowbirdsin...
- p1mrx 6y agoThe origin was probably thousands of years ago; it's a basic property of positional number systems.
- rizpanjwani 6y agonice detail on the alien having 4 digits.
- bckr 6y agoBut every base is not described in the base most commonly written for human reading as "base 10"
- gkop 6y agoSaving other non-math people like me a web search explaining this: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/the-funniest-math-joke/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/the-funn...
- HoverSausage 6y agoI actually ran into this once not as a joke. I was using some software which had an option that would change the default base it used for all numbers. After typing <command> 16 and fiddling about in hexadecimal I tried switching back to decimal using <command> 10, yet I was still in hex mode. It took me a few more seconds than it should for me to realise what had happened.
- rfurmani 6y agoIt must be the command-line calculator bc
- HoverSausage 6y agoThat's possible, it was a long time ago and I can't remember for sure
- mostlylurks 6y agoExcept for base 1.
- vletal 6y agoNice corner case. It's pretty much useless, it would contain just a single value. Is it even valid base?
- taneliv 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tally_marks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tally_marks
- mostlylurks 6y agoIt can actually represent all integers just fine. It works like any other base, except whereas for example in base 10, positions are multiplied by 10^0 = 1, 10^1 = 10, 10^2 = 100 and so on, in base 1 they are multiplied by 1^0 = 1, 1^1 = 1, 1^2 = 1, and so on. The result is that each digit adds 1 to the number, like tally marks. So we have, for example 111 = 3 11 = 2 1 = 1 = 0 -1 = -1 -11 = -2 -111 = -3
- vletal 6y agoThat is wierd. Base k includes numbers 0,...,k-1. For example 101 is a valid number in base 2 which is 2^2 + 2^1. Using that logic, base 1 would only contain 0, hence it should not be able to expresss more values that 0. Is your example actually a valid base 1?
- sunstone 6y agoAll your base are belong to us.
- ScottBurson 6y agoExcept in Common Lisp, where every base is base 10, but only one base is base 10. .
- kazinator 6y agoEvery base is base "one zero"; not every base is base "ten".
- divbzero 6y agoYes, the word for base 10 is “decimal” [1] and digits do not have to be decimal digits. There are also binary digits “bits” [2], ternary digits “trits” [3], and so on. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bit [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ternary_numeral_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ternary_numeral_system
- cobbzilla 6y agoHow does it hold in base 2? Wouldn’t changing the least significant digit always make any prime an even number?